Feiglin: State Buying Muslim Honor with Israeli Pride

MK: Giving up Israeli sovereignty to keep the peace will lead to war.

By Maayana Miskin

First Publish: 3/27/2013, 12:16 PM

Visiting the Temple Mount

Israel news photo: Flash 90

Israel is sacrificing its sovereignty and national honor for the sake of Muslim quiet, MK Moshe Feiglin (Likud) said Wednesday, after he was barred from the Temple Mount over fears his visit would be met with a Muslim riot.

Feiglin warned that the current approach actually encourages Muslim violence.

“Like the apology over violence on the [Mavi] Marmara – this morning, on the Temple Mount, it was decided to buy Muslim silence with the coin of lost sovereignty and Israeli national pride,” he wrote on Facebook. “This approach always leads to a much more difficult war down the line.”

Feiglin noted that after his last visit to the Temple Mount led to the holy site being closed down due to a Muslim riot, he gave police plenty of advance notice that he planned to visit again. The visit was approved, he said, yet when he arrived at the site he was told he could not enter.

“The explanation given was that the Muslim mob is waiting for me to come in order to start protesting. I asked the commander why he isn’t ordering his people to remove the lawbreakers from the Mount, and instead is punishing the law-abiding party,” Feiglin said. “The answer was, ‘That’s the situation… ‘”

“This is very problematic for two reasons,” he continued. “First of all, this is exactly the same encouragement to violence that the Muslim world got when the lawbreakers from the Marmara got an Israeli apology. That is – removing me from the Mount is what will encourage violence.”

“But the more serious, more significant aspect of this is the fact that a Member of Knesset, a representative of Israel as a sovereign state, is prevented from ascending [the Mount] while any random tourist can go up with no problem,” Feiglin said.

“If, during my last visit, when an officer told me that the Temple Mount is under Muslim sovereignty there was room to hope that it was just an unfortunate slip of the tongue, the Israel Police have proved that it was not a slip of the tongue. Israeli authorities since 1967 have allowed the erosion of Israeli sovereignty on the Mount,” he warned.

“I will keep fighting with every means at my disposal, both in the public realm and in parliament, to restore Israeli sovereignty to the heart of the nation, the Temple Mount,” Feiglin declared.